As we’ve already mentioned, we couldn’t be happier that Apple has chosen to leverage our own Readability as a native feature in the Safari browser. As the debate around Safari Reader heats up, we thought we’d chime in and share some of our thoughts, motivations and aspirations for what reading can become on the Web.
The Decline of Print
It’s been well reported that traditional print publishing is in a state of turmoil today. For years, it has been experiencing a gradual decline in paper advertising and circulation. All the while, the ad revenue from Web properties has not caught up with the revenue lost on the print side.
In response, what has materialized is an almost frantic attempt to deliver as many ad impressions as possible alongside original copy on the Web. Some news sources and blogs do a better job than others, but many show no regard for the potential impact on the viewing and reading experience. The ad men have bullied their way into art direction and copy. In the fight to survive, the due respect that a quality piece of content deserves goes by the wayside.
But this isn’t only about ads.
When we created Readability, we built something we badly wanted. It turned out that legions of others wanted the same thing. So what exactly did we want?
We wanted a better reading experience.
Here’s the harsh reality for publishers big and small: when we read, we want to be left alone. If the article or post is really great, we really want to be left alone. The better the text, the more we’d like to be left alone with it.
So what needs to go away so I can read peacefully? Everything. Not just ads. Layers of navigation. Reams of “related” links. Article “tools” for sharing. Everything but the stuff worth reading must leave our line of sight. This is the place we all seek to be when we find something worth reading.
Beyond just a “clean” reading view, Readability has proven invaluable for people with vision problems and cognitive difficulties. We’ve received countless emails from users thanking us for making the Web usable again for them.
We wanted a consistent reading experience.
It isn’t only about removing unwanted elements to read peacefully. It’s about transforming a page so that it presents itself in a manner that the reader finds familiar. The Web is an incredible but wildly unpredictable place. There are no interface guidelines for the Web. It can be experienced in countless ways. While some de facto design patterns have surfaced, there is no sense of consistency.
Apple enjoys substantial customer loyalty by exerting an unusual amount of control on how interfaces and content are presented. The typical iPhone application evinces a common set of patterns and elements that reinforce themselves across applications. The Web benefits from none of that. There is no “user advocate” for the Web.
Readability and its progeny impose an after-the-fact quasi-standard. By empowering users to effectively force a particular set of visual guidelines, we provided an antidote for inconsistency and unpredictability. I personally find myself clicking on Readability on sites that have no ads at all and are relatively well-designed. It isn’t just about removing stuff, it’s about imposing a consistent experience across the Web.
We wanted it on the Web.
Publishing has written off the Web. The line of argument is familiar: It’s messy. It’s cluttered. It’s unsafe. People expect everything to be free. As a result, publishing finds itself looking elsewhere to solve the puzzle of distributing and monetizing. Magazines like Time, Wired and Popular Science have decided to invest in delivering purchasable “packages” of their content that work on Apple’s iPad. Many magazines and newspaper subscriptions are available today on Amazon’s Kindle.
Why not the Web? How did the Web become relegated as the discount bin of content? The Web is perfectly capable of delivering a world class, beautifully designed reading experience.
For us, the Web is the right bet. The notion of tethering content delivery to a particular proprietary platform or hardware device is admitting defeat. Content is effectively locked up. It’s un-shareable, un-index-able, inaccessible and un-linkable. It’s a glorified form of paper.
Where do we go from here?
Let’s work back from what we believe everyone would like to see happen on the Web:
- We want a reading experience that is attractive, consistent and isn’t tethered to any single hardware or software standard, but rather works seamlessly on the Web and across various form factors and devices.
- We want a set of standards or design guidelines that publishers can opt into that deliver a consistent way of experiencing content.
- We want a way to package up or “bundle” discrete units of content (e.g. articles that comprise a magazine) and represent them in an easily searchable, findable way on the Web.
To date, Readability is purely an end user tool. As we look ahead, we plan to make it even easier for both users and publishers to deliver better reading experiences on the Web.
If you care about all facets of the Web reading experience – design, typography, semantics, technology – and are interested in helping us take Readability from a browser tool to a broader Web reading platform, we’d love to hear from you.
We’re incredibly excited about what we have in store for Readability. You can keep up with updates and announcements by visiting this blog or following us on Twitter.
Harvey said:
Readability is really a great idea!
Mandy said:
Bravo on the Safari adoption. I’m eager to see where Readability goes next.
Justin Jackson said:
Reading text on the web is such a challenge: text is small, squished, and flanked by ads. Readability changed the way I read on the web.
Thanks guys!
Matt said:
Agree with everything, I love the Readability plugin and love how you’ve pushed the debate and effected real change.
An aside: I would love for the option to make the margins to the be narrower and/or make the font even bigger for readability. I still find Instapaper more readable (esp. on mobile devices) because the font size is nice and big.
(Ironically, i think the margins are too wide on this very post ^^, and the font is definitely too small in this comment box).
Thanks again.
Mike Grace said:
Amen! Soo glad you created Readability because it makes my life better for all the reasons you listed. Keep up the great work!
Leon said:
I’d be interested to hear how you plan to make Readability a platform rather than a remedy for bad design; some form of template or CMS for publishers?
Robin Harris said:
Readability still has a place on my Safari bookmarks bar. Safari Reader is good, but it doesn’t handle all the pages that Readability does. Some of the other more subtle features are missing as well.
On the topic of digital magazines: I find online digital editions – like the digital New Yorker – that present the print edition in a browser to be unreadable. Thank goodness for my ScanSnap!
Robin
Erik Neu said:
I like it! Now how about an Android phone version? That’s kind of a joke, but the type size on smartphones is a huge problem. Even when I pick the LARGE font it is often way too small–and I am only slightly farsighted.
Thank you very much for this tool. (FYI, referred from Scripting News)
Brian said:
If I didn’t have RD as the first bookmark in the list on my iPad, I’d have tossed the iPad into the ocean long ago. Brilliant, useful, beloved tool, all day every day.
Danny Sullivan said:
Here’s a bit of news. We already have a publishing platform that’s not “tethered” to a particular bit of hardware or software. It’s called HTML. It’s called the web. It’s worked pretty well for the past 15 years or so.
Ah, but that’s not “attractive” or “consistent.” You mean like AOL was, before the Wild West of the web appeared?
I have no doubt you’ve plenty of users who appreciate the “consistent” generic view of the web that your software seeks to create. Perhaps many of them also feel reassured when in a strange country that there’s a McDonald’s or Starbucks they can go into, in order to get a “consistent” dining experience. But to me, that’s a pretty boring world.
As for all those ad men (and presumably women) you mention. They haven’t pushed their way into my art direction and copy. Nor have I changed my blog to simply try and show as many ad impressions as possible. Nor do I think I’m unique as a publisher in this.
I have ads because they help support the quality journalism my blog provides. I have related links because, news flash, sometimes readers like to read related material.
If we’re talking about due respect, here’s the “harsh reality” for those readers who want to be left alone. Ads pay for what you read. Since most readers don’t want to pay for subscriptions — don’t even make voluntary donations when asked — those ads underwrite content that they consume.
Tell you what. Why don’t you create a version of your software that provides revenue to any site that it is used on, money that comes from those readers who want to be “left alone.” Because if you want to channel an income stream to us, sure, we can drop all the stuff you unilaterally have declared as just a distraction, which includes things that pay our bills.
Alternatively, try putting a little work into perhaps making a plug-in that can incorporate existing ads in an attractive way. Surely you can design that, right? I mean, you’ve managed to shove in a Readability logo, a logo for Arch90 and a pitch to follow you on Twitter into the bottom of pages you make more “readable.” Ads for yourself are OK and not distracting, but ads that actually support the content that you’re making more readable aren’t?
Until then, please don’t play things as if publishers have no respect for our readers. We do.
Danny Sullivan said:
Oh, I also noticed the “Fonts by Typekit” ad you have at the bottom of pages that Readability generates. I thought maybe this was just a credit. But it really is an ad, right? I mean, you’ve got tracking codes assigned to the URL”
“utm_source=readability&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=athelas”
Are you earning off that link?
Danny Sullivan said:
Just so we’re clear, here are the ads I see Readability shoving into the bottom of the pages where it has, ironically, reformatted by removing the publishers’ own ads:
http://twitpic.com/1vnip1
Ben said:
I love readability. Have for as long as it’s been around.
I’d be a little bit gay for the readability guys. You know… if that’s not weird for you.
Rich Ziade said:
Danny:
You’re obviously angry. It’s worth noting that we just created the tool. We did not create the sentiment around the tool. Before Readability, people cut & pasted. People sought out the “Print” button. Nobody wants to read in the middle of Times Square.
Ultimately, this is between you and your readers. Not you and us. We never expected people to respond so strongly to this tool. Consider the response a sign to take things in a better direction.
Readability Fan said:
Hell of an argument, Danny; bitter much? So based on your logic and helpful illustration, should all manufacturers should stop branding their products as well? Should Ford and GM no longer emblematize their vehicles? No more rolling of the credits after a movie?
Removing crap from a site is vastly different than what you describe. If I want to read the “related ads,” I won’t decrapify the page with Readability. If I want to view ads targeted or carpet bombed at me, I’ll open the val-pak coupons that get delivered to my door. They relate to my purchasing habits and interests as much as the Krohn & Moss Consumer Law Center when I visit your site.
Aaron said:
Hi Danny Sullivan. I’ve been a delighted user of Readability for a while now. I consider it hugely valuable for all the main reasons outlined in this article.
You put a lot of effort into describing what you consider “irony” of the clickable items at the bottom of a Readability-transformed page. I think this is unfounded criticism. These small unobtrusive items do not detract from my user experience. Also, they are consistent; a main value discussed in this article.
About “ads pay for what you read”: look around and you’ll see things changing and changing fast. The meaning of the word “ad” is changing and mutating in wonderful and weird ways. As is the meaning of the word “read”. It may be a platitude, I know, but dude… your business should change or it could very well die.
And, a powerful factor that isn’t going away anytime soon: I get to choose how my computer works and what it does. I realize that upsets many people for many different reasons, some of them good reasons (maybe). But… oh well here we are.
Finally, a tiny nitpick: A tracking link doesn’t necessarily mean that something is an ad, or that money is trading hands. Web publishers may use tracking links just for… well, tracking.
Clytie Siddall said:
Also, Danny, please don’t forget the accessibility created by Readability. I wonder if any of the media “hysteria” has taken that into reasonable account? Without Readability, I wouldn’t be able to read the Web at all. So, if I visit your site, I’m only able to do that because Readability makes it readable for me. I have visual and concentration difficulties due to illness. I’m far from the only person in this situation: disabled people are a much larger proportion of the active population online than they are offline, since computers make it possible for us to participate. The pool of people with visual/concentration difficulties simply due to age is even larger. From a purely economic POV (if that is your only stance on this topic), wiithout Readability you lose all that participation.
From the accessibility POV, Readability is an extremely effective inclusive tool. I am deeply grateful for it. (And I agree with Matt: the font size in this comment box is way too small. I had to write this comment in my text editor, then paste it in.)
Also, I asked my 19-year-old daughter about this issue. She’s been using computers since the age of 2, and is generally surrounded by multiple screens and activities. Her opinion: “When I arrive at a messy or distracting webpage, I just close the tab.”
Neo said:
Its the best. We need an androi app, for readibility!!
Marwan said:
Guys, in Danny’s defense, he does have a point… but that doesn’t take away from Readability’s merits and further potential… Rich nailed it down perfectly in terms of what users are looking for; case in point I was able to skim through his text in seconds and capture the essence (great achievement for someone with mild ADD), all because of its plain vanilla print-like format…
I think the major takeaway is that the user, once again, is regaining his centric position, and this is just the begining for great tools like Readability… Great job Arc90! and let’s keep encouraging the Danny’s to speak up, they are the users afterall…
youfoundjake said:
Also, why doesnt the Apple Website prompt a reader icon? Do they think that everything on their pages NEEDS to be seen?
Hamish said:
@Danny Sullivan: “Alternatively, try putting a little work into perhaps making a plug-in that can incorporate existing ads in an attractive way.”
But that is precisely *your* job, and the job of website designers everywhere: to design your ad layout in such a way that I don’t feel the need to press the “reader” button.
Tim Meaney said:
@All – thanks for contributing to this debate. Two things to note, a number of you pointed out the small type size on our comments (and noted the slight irony ;) – we’ve just updated to a larger size. We also added the ability to link to a particular comment, such as Clytie’s brilliant one earlier in this thread:
http://blog.arc90.com/2010/06/10/why-we-built-readability/#comment-6784
Danny Sullivan said:
Readability Fan, not so much bitter as insulted that Arc90 comes along in this blog post and declares that I and other publishers are overrun by ad people and apparently have no respect for our readers. It’s not true. Want to argue that people like pages without ads. Sure. So do I. But that doesn’t mean pages with ads were created by publishers who have it out for their readers.
Aaron, it is ironic that Readability shows its own ads at the bottom of an article page after removing those from a publisher. Give it some more thought, and it could take ads from a regular web site and put them at the bottom. Hey, don’t like the ads — you only have them at the end. But it doesn’t even appear to try. But it does make the effort to push its own stuff. I mean what, you’re using Readability — did you need a reminder of it at the bottom, along with what appears to be an affiliate ad? How’s that adding to the readability experience.
On your nitpick — yes, it could be a tracking link. But if it is, why don’t the other ads they list have them? And why not clarify that rather than skip over answering entirely?
As for the ad model, here’s the thing. Tools like Readability aren’t new. For the most part, they never get wide adoption. So publishers pretty much don’t worry about ads being stripped. If they did, let me tell you that your world as a reader will radically change. For one, publishers will fight back and find ways to block you. For another, you can expect to find more paid links embedded in articles. Worse, some publishers will decide if you don’t like the overt ads, which often are clearly separated from editorial content, they’ll just bend to clever advertorials. But dude, if that’s the way you want businesses to change, there you go.
Clytie, accessiblity is important, especially for the visually impaired. No argument there.
Hamish, of course design is my work. But that’s not what Arc90 seems to respect. In Arc90′s world, the web needs to be a “consistent” place. It all apparently needs to look the same — regardless of usability.
“The Web is an incredible but wildly unpredictable place. There are no interface guidelines for the Web. It can be experienced in countless ways. While some de facto design patterns have surfaced, there is no sense of consistency.”
I’ve been to plenty of web sites where I can read articles just fine but which have radically different designs. I LIKE that. I like that the web is not a generic McDonald’s of content.
That’s a big issue I have with this post. Not with Readability itself, or readers who use it, but Arc90′s apparently attitude that the web is broke and won’t get fixed until we iPadize it or whatever. That it wants to “imposing a consistent experience across the Web.”
Who likes having things imposed on them? Are there other things that the content police at Arc90 will decide to impose on me and other publishers next?
Rich, as I said, I’m more insulted than angry. I’m not insulted by my readers who might use Readability. I’m insulted by the arguments you put forth in this article. Those suggest that gosh, I’m somehow failing my users by putting ads on my pages or noting things like related articles. Crazy old me, working with designers and a usability firm to discuss who to build a design that worked for both my readers and our publication. What was I thinking?
Your company wrote those things, not my readers. I’m suggesting perhaps you might take a review of your arguments and give a little thought about whether the tool you’ve created might incorporate more thought about how to support publications.
At the very least, I’d encourage you not to put forth a holier than thou argument that makes it sound like thousands of publishers are big failures because they haven’t turned the web into a giant “print-only” version that you’d seem to prefer. That you might consider things that are distractions to you might also have a purpose, that might not be a distraction but actual useful context stuff. You know, like when you wipe out comments that often add information to a story.
Also, is that an affiliate ad or not? Don’t dodge the question. Answer it. And regardless, I think you should drop all the logos and links at the bottom of the page. At least you’ll be less hypocritical in doing so.
Rich Ziade said:
@Danny -
It’s not an affiliate ad. There are not ads on the page. There never will be. If you looked carefully enough, you’d realize that Typekit is a font service. They kindly agreed to allow font styling options and we give them credit for doing so. There are no ads. We just choose to acknowledge and give credit to those that have contributed to this effort.
Here’s what I think you’re missing: we don’t scrub your page first. First, the page loads in all its glory. When people decide they want to read an article, they don’t want all the other stuff to be around. They want it gone. Think of it as a mode shift: “Ok, I’ve decided to read. Let me go into that mode…” That’s the spirit of the tool.
Finally, I appreciate your love of the variety of the Web. Keep on enjoying it. Readability is not mandated by law or religious decree. If it isn’t to your liking, don’t use it.
IncrediBILL said:
That “clutter” as you call it pays the bills, keeps a roof over the heads of publishers and feeds their children.
Is your goal to deprive authors of well deserved income or it the aim just to let their children go to bed hungry?
If this type of freeloading attitude prevails, people will simply stop authoring free ad based content and your Readability won’t be worth the toilet paper the code was written on.
Danny Sullivan said:
I did look carefully, Rich. That’s why I didn’t mention it originally. I thought, that’s nice — they’re crediting a service that they might be using as part of the software. But then I noticed tracking codes. The use of the word “affiliate” in that. The fact that Typekit sells things. And I wondered, quite fairly I think, whether you were earning off this.
I get the point of how Readability works. I mean, I did actually install the tool to try it before commenting. It’s a nice tool. And yes, I know that people will see the original version of a page before you strip things down to what you unilaterally consider to be the essential part of the page.
I can even hang with the “spirit” of the tool as you describe. The problem I have is with the “spirit,” I guess, of what you expressed in this article. That a McDonald’s web would be better for users. That you think standards that you declare should be imposed on people. You actually sounds like you are issuing a religious decree.
That’s a bad, bad way to start when you finally get further down and suggest that you want to find a way to work with publishers like myself and others. That’s the point of taking time out of my day to comment on your post. To say back off a bit on the insults and maybe think a bit more about how publishers are also human, publishers also design things for a reason, that publishers actually do think about their readers, too.
As your your ending “acknowledgments,” at my site. we have some of those to. One is the author’s image and a short bio. You strip that. I kind of think the author deserves more acknowledgment in an article a reader reviews using your tool than your tool does.
You strip out all the comments, which as I’ve said often have great information that adds to an article. I guess the Readability user just will know that they exist, right?
You strip out the ability for people to easily follow our publication on Twitter, which is listed at the bottom of our articles. Despite this, you insert your own link to follow YOU on Twitter. Why’s my follow link a distraction for my readers but your follow link is not?
In fact, why do you need it on each and every page you serve up? Once I’ve installed Readability, I know what I’m using. I don’t need a reminder of the product name, that your company made it and to be told you have a Twitter account. But all those publications that people visit, they actually do need that Twitter reminder, as they aren’t going to be in front of a Readability user as often.
Heck, you don’t even leave my publication’s logo in the article. You strip off my brand as a “distraction” and apply your own instead.
These are things I hope you’ll consider, not simply write off as a publisher who doesn’t get it. I get it deeply. I’m a writer, first and foremost. Been writing on the web for 15 years exclusively. I absolutely care about my readers. I’ll take to heart that they might want even better design. Actually, I’ve long done that. But I’d hope you all at Arc90 would take some time to think about the publisher issues that frankly, you don’t seem to give a damn about.
And you should drop the credits. If the publishers themselves don’t get credits, you don’t deserve them more.
Nick Usborne said:
In the original post above, the word “we” appears no fewer than 33 times. That’s quite an achievement for an article of that length.
No wonder it sounds so paternalistic.
I don’t believe people have any trouble reading content within a wide variety of visual environments. Newspapers, billboards, magazines, books, emails, web pages and so on.
There isn’t a problem here that needs to be fixed.
As for readability, the issue is one of good design or bad design. The same goes for any medium…print, web email etc.
Regarding the ads, there is no problem that needs fixing there either. We are all capable of filtering out the ads, unless we choose to look at them.
If the ads genuinely get in the way of readability, again that’s simply a matter of poor design.
For myself I would only apply this kind of rigorous, “has to be consistent and free of ads” approach if I were aiming the content at young children, who don’t yet have the skills and experience to remain focused on the text.
And there we are again…back to paternalism.
For myself…Have brain. Will use it. Kiddie help not required.
Nick
Chris Dary said:
Danny, one thing I can guarantee you is that we are thinking about the publisher’s angle, and have been thinking about it for some time now.
Readability helped to identify the problem. Looking forward, we’ll be working towards a solution that’s amenable for both readers and publishers. And totally optional.
Rich Ziade said:
Danny:
In regards to what the algorithm strips and what it doesn’t, rest assured we would’ve loved to find a consistently predictable way of extracting author information and the like – but we simply can’t. It’s nearly impossible to do it programatically.
As for credit – we delivered a free tool that a lot of people find valuable. Again, there is a way to never see our logo and never invoke Readability: don’t use it. Just as you have every right never to walk into a McDonalds. Though I will say, their fries rock.
I’d be glad to start a conversation with you on how we can get to the right place. You can email me at rich@arc90.com if you like.
Christopher Fahey said:
To Danny: I use Readability, but not very often at all. I use it on web sites that are, in fact, extremely poorly or offensively designed, or that simply distract me from my intent to deeply read text. Fortunately for me, most of the sites I visit aren’t so bad. I like having Readability as a backup, however, for those few sites whose type choices, ad placement, cross-promotions, etc., are so egregious that I simply cannot access the valued content.
As far as I understand it, Readability (and Safari’s Reader feature) are not “always-on” features or modes. They must be triggered by the user, one page at a time, whenever a page strikes them as hard to read.
I think Rich’s original post may have a manifesto-like stridency that may appear, to you, like a broad brush painting _all_ web sites containing any ads whatsoever as atrocious offenders against usability. I am adding my own voice here to tell you that there are plenty of sites, maybe even including yours, for which most Safari and Readability users will see no need to click a button to make the bad design go away.
In short, even if you have ads on your site you probably have little to fear or get angry about, as long as your design is high-quality. Why should I bother to click a button to read a page that is already perfectly readable and whose secondary content is tastefully and helpfully positioned in the page layout?
But if you have ads on your site _and_ your site’s design is super shitty, then you will have a problem with users choosing to use another design over yours. But, again, as Rich says, that problem is between you and your readers.
Scott Schwartz said:
I have to say I’m pretty surprised at some of the negative reactions to this post.
I think we all understand that ads are a necessary evil for a lot of content sites. Too many sites, however, go way overboard (I’m looking at you ExtremeTech.com, pcmag.com), burying content in a seizure-inducing cacophany of advertisements. A saner, more thoughtful approach to balancing ads and content would’ve mooted the need for Readability. Alas, the horse is out of the barn. TV networks eventually found the tolerable ratio of ads:content; they also had a big headstart.
(By the way, well-planned sites make liberal use of print CSS styles to produce uncluttered, readable pages. Far too few, however, do.)
In a former work life I was a copywriter and editor. I used to spend many, many hours polishing and tweaking copy, in the hopes that our readers would appreciate the editorial choices that produced an article that informed and entertained. Readability helps you focus on just that.
I echo Rich’s sentiment — if you don’t like it, don’t use it. For me, you’ll have to have break my fingers to get it out of my hands.
Ravi said:
Full disclosure: Arc90 employee here…
I think that Rich’s post may have been misread by some. I really don’t think he was arguing that the web is broken or that web sites should be more consistently designed or more consistently experienced, nor that they need to be free of clutter, less interactive, less busy or even ad-free.
I think that his post refers to the difficulty of changing modes, from a hyper-text, highly functional and multi-tasking mode to a single function, highly focused reading mode. The point is that the application stack that makes up the web is flexible enough to serve many purposes, and this highly focused reading mode is one purpose that it can serve well but that it often isn’t used to serve.
Sometimes content is really written for a reader who is focused on reading — maybe it’s longer format, less scan-able, you can use whatever criteria you like to decide when that is. It’s not ideal when content that is in that category is presented in an interface that is designed for many things other than reading and therefore is not optimized for reading.
Readability (as it seems to me) was designed to give readers one option (there may and will be other options) for changing modes more easily than existing options like the oft-missing print view.
I have trouble seeing how it, or Rich’s post or even the feelings people have about them can actually harm publishers. Readability (and Arc90) doesn’t have the power (as far as I know) to prevent publishers from showing ads next to their content or to prevent readers from seeing them. It presents readers the choice, once they’ve already seen content the way the publisher intended, to change modes.
The original post also refers to the need to provide content producers with some new choices for presenting content and for packaging it, and it might be inferred from that that there’s an argument being laid out here for a publishing paradigm to replace existing ones, that eschews advertising and interactivity and variety and personality. I don’t think that is what is being implied here and I think that is really an imaginary threat.
In any case, it seems to me that Arc90 is in the business of making things that people — publishers, consumers, and anyone else — have a choice to use because they are useful or to not use because they are not. Likewise the sentiments in this post and its attendant comments are useful to the extent that they resonate with you, and anyone can choose to ignore them if they are not. I think the idea is to give publishers and readers one possible framework for thinking about how to make things even better than they already are. I don’t think Rich’s original post was meant to insult anyone and I don’t know how anyone who considers themselves to already be trying to do right by their readers could take it personally.
One small postscript: I think that to say over and over that a piece of software is doing this or doing that is a error that is quite telling of a common misconception. Readability doesn’t DO anything. People do things with Readability. It might be helpful, in framing arguments against this or that tool, to keep in mind that the behavior you may be criticizing is the behavior of a person, namely your reader.
Joel P said:
(I’m another Arc90 employee weighing in.)
Readability is the right to bear arms. We may differ on whether people use it as a well-regulated militia fighting back against the tyranny of awful design, or a bunch of survivalist nutjobs shooting at everything that moves. I can only speak for myself – if your site is readable, even with ads, even with a lot of them, I don’t use Readability. If it’s not, well, guns don’t kill people, terrible terrible web design does.
Danny Sullivan said:
Rich, on the credit thing, I deliver a valuable free tool to people too. My information. I spend hours, sometimes days, writing some pieces. So do my other editors and writers. If you’re going to make a tool that reframes my content, it’s not unreasonable to ask that you give credit to me within the new design you are creating, right alongside your own credit.
On the “don’t use” it argument, this doesn’t really hold up. I’m not using it as a publisher. You’re giving it to others to use, whether I like it as a publisher or not. I have no choice.
You’re effectively telling people who walk into a store that if they don’t like the way the products are displayed, they can come over to a special area you’re making, without the permission of the store owner, and you’ll sell them the products in another way. The store owner doesn’t get to opt-out of this.
If you really want to do right by publishers, you let them choose to opt-out of your tool. That’s part of the bottom line. I suspect most won’t bother, but there’s an argument that if you’re going to make a tool, it should respect all the stakeholders involved. Readers are one; so are publishers.
Put it another way. What if someone makes a “readability” tool that extracts key articles and places ads alongside them, or inserts paid links into the articles. At what point is stepping over the line about what’s a tool that a user is using, what the tool maker is responsible for and when you get to change things without a publisher’s consent. I don’t know the answers to that myself. But that’s why when you offer an opt-out, you establish trust with publishers who might have concerns.
I get the issue in finding it hard to predictably extract author information. Down the line, you might entice some publishers to custom tag content for inclusion. Perhaps you could have them custom tag the ads that might be carried above or below a Readability-version of their web pages. But this also underscores my concern about the product. You’re making an assumption that the main article is all that matters when someone reads an article. It’s not. Context is important, which can include related articles, comments and author information.
Ravi, I’m sorry, but Rich’s post very much implied that the web is broken. “Publishing has written off the web.” Are you kidding me? A tiny, tiny number of well known publishers are pimping themselves out on the iPad in hopes that it will save them from declining subscription revenue. The vast majority of publishers on the web are doing nothing. They don’t need to. People can get their content on the iPad through its web browser. The VAST majority of publishers and published documents on the web do nothing. The web has ushered in an explosion of new publishers. Please don’t tell me the often dinosaur-acting publishers of newspapers and magazines get to still define what publishing is all about.
As for trouble seeing the harm in this post to publishers, it supports a myth that publishers only care to shove ads down readers’ throats; that ads are bad; that anything that’s not a story is a distraction. It also supports a myth that News Corporation especially is pushing, that people on the web are “net neanderthals” who simply want everything for free. Who cares about your ads — I’m going to strip those distractions and take what I want, how I want it, with no respect for your publication or its needs.
These are bad myths to support, all around. The post is also just flat wrong in the idea that everyone’s just chasing “as many ad impressions” as possible. Actually, the past year we’ve seen major publishers ponder if they should pull back behind paywalls, because they can’t earn enough on the ad impressions they already have out there. That’s chasing fewer ad impressions, not more.
So to Joel and his “guns don’t kill people” argument. Of course they do, if you hand them out, point at some people and say “go on, these people are fine to kill.” That’s what this post does. It says that hey, all these publishers are bad people, doing stuff that gets in the way of your reading experience. So here’s our gun, fire away.
You need to show more responsibility than that. You need to acknowledge that many publishers are struggling not because of bad design but because people do largely refuse to pay for content online. If there are so many ads out there, there’s a good argument that the users themselves can be blamed. It’s not like we haven’t had publishers try subscription options before. For the most part, not enough people step forward to take them up. That’s why ads continue to be an important revenue stream.
In short, you need to really think about some of the tone in this piece and maybe remind users of your product that when they strip out all that stuff, they might want to go back to those publications and later read what was missing. Some of the ads. See if there was a donation button. A subscription option. Ask if they’ve considered becoming a subscriber. Because if they’re ignoring the ads with your tool, they’re making a deliberate decision not to support the publications they’re frequenting in any way.
This post did none of that. Publishers pretty much got painted as the bad guys, with Readability as the weapon of choice to take them out. We’re not bad guys. We’re the people who make the content you want to consume. We deserve support, not to be attacked. If people want a better reading experience, first and foremost tell the publications that you visit. We love feedback. We listen.
Thanks for the comments. I’ve appreciated the dialog. And Rich, sure I’d be happy to talk more offline and will get in touch later.
Tim Meaney said:
@Danny – you raise an interesting analogy here:
“You’re effectively telling people who walk into a store that if they don’t like the way the products are displayed, they can come over to a special area you’re making, without the permission of the store owner, and you’ll sell them the products in another way. The store owner doesn’t get to opt-out of this.”
I think this is a critical discussion point. At which point has a visitor to an article or blog post “paid” and earned the right to do with the content what they wish? If they’ve visited your page, viewed your ads, have they “paid”? What if they then take the text into Microsoft Word via copy / paste to read it there? What if they run it through a speech program because they have low vision? Do you object to those use cases?
If you don’t object to those uses of your content, doesn’t that imply the “transaction” between buyer and seller was already consummated & at that point the reader has the right to read the content in their manner of their choosing? And if not, when has the reader “paid” for the content such that they can do what they want with it?
Danny Sullivan said:
Tim, I don’t have exact answers to all these questions. And there are many use cases beyond these. Lots of this stuff is fuzzy.
Yes, if someone’s viewed my page and the ads on it, that’s a form of payment to me. However, if they regularly visit and block my ads, they’re more freeloading. If a significant number did this, I’d look to block them or make them pay in some other fashion. But it’s a tiny number, so it’s not worth the bother.
If they want the pain of copy and paste, I don’t really object. But I also don’t have Microsoft positioning its tool for that purpose. See, that’s part of my issue with this post. It’s not the tool — it was the attitude that publishers are somehow doing wrong. The tool is nice. I get that. I can see why people would want to use it. It was the tone of the “problems” that publishers have that concern me.
I have no problem with speech recognition. We should, as most sites should, probably do much more to help the visually impaired.
None of these are new issues. I mean, ad blockers have been around for ages, as have page enhancement tools. Should I be upset if someone uses a Greasemonkey tool to alter my content. If someone enlarges my fonts using the browser’s native capabilities, do I object to that? No, I don’t, by the way.
For the most part, as I’ve said, these things haven’t been a concern to publishers because they simply are not used that much. Those that do use them are very passionate. But they represent not legions of readers. They represent probably 0.001% of readers on the web.
Safari is a big deal, because this puts blocking in front of many more people. But it’s an option, and it’s an option most will probably also ignore. It’s a larger concern the most this type of feature comes to browsers with more marketshare and the more it is shifted into a default setting. I don’t expect that will happen. But if it should, then I do hope there’s more attention in the tool itself to publisher issues. Right now, I’m mainly objecting to the notion that publishers somehow don’t care about their readers or that things on our pages are distractions, rather than the tool itself.
Tasha Bergson-Michelson said:
I’m a new fan of Readability, and a long-time fan of Danny Sullivan’s from back in my early days as a librarian.
As one user mentioned sarcastically, I am very interested in using Readability with students. I teach research skills, and my methods are based on what I observe and hear from kids about their experiences on the Web…which has a lot to do lately with how they interact with images on a page. To the point where students have started telling me that they cannot actually read the content on a page if they can’t first identify all the images (Readability will sometimes, but not always, help with this problem). Or that they are choosing to trust websites because they have pink backgrounds or have a cool ad, as they have not been taught other means of discerning quality information (numerous studies show that adults do this too, of course). But educators are really looking for a tool like this one, which will allow students to engage fully in the text, without distraction or pink backgrounds. You should see them drool when I demonstrate—but we also worry about how to sustain quality content if we are avoiding ads.
In point of fact, I think it is dangerous for educators to train kids to *only* view pages through a tool like Readability, and it is equally problematic for adults (challenges to accessibility momentarily aside) to do so, either. Because the Web often presents information without more traditional forms of quality control, astute information consumers are looking for a number of clues that are embedded all around the pages they access—information about the author, a sense of the kind of links that are being offered around the page, and more. I would hope, then, that users are taking real time to look both at the original page and the Readability version. In the same way, I would hope that Danny’s frequent readers would be checking the page (as he points out) for other resources that his team has pulled together that would be of interest to them. These actions are simply good practices for engaged information consumers, and I would not like to teach a person to use Readability without also reminding him or her to look carefully at a page in its original form (which makes me think I’d better post a follow-up to my recent post…).
Finally, I would like to second Danny’s suggestion that ads could be moved to the bottom of the page. Tim, when I originally wrote about Readability last week you found my blog and commented about the new feature moving links to the bottom of the page as footnotes. Many of the folks I’ve shared your tool with really like that new feature. I think it would be highly workable to move all my “additional information” to the bottom of the page in that manner. It would then be out of the path of my concentrated reading experience, but still accessible to me, and supporting my content providers. And maybe it would encourage web designers to keep ads in the traditional places on the page, as Danny does, so that we can raise students who retain the ability to tell the difference between the ads and the editorial content in the first place.
sneezy said:
I love Readbility and while I admit that I don’t know much about how web (or print, or TV or radio, for that matter) advertising works, I don’t really understand what Danny Sullivan’s objection is.
My understanding is that publishers are paid by advertisers on either a “per impression” or “per click” basis. By the time I use Readibility, the web page and its ads have already been delivered to my browser, so if the pub is paid per impression, there is no loss of income. If the pub is paid per click, well, I wasn’t going to click on the ads anyway, so there is still no loss of income. In terms of ad revenue for publishers, I just don’t see what the problem is.
The design of many web sites, in terms of readability, is absolutely atrocious (although in fairness, Mr. Sullivan’s doesn’t look too bad, at least at a first glance), and that’s the problem that Readability solves for me. I wouldn’t willingly browse the web without it.
maliha said:
I have found it very useful for some badly designed sites, with ads all over the content. I wish someone would build a readability for TV, sick of the commercials.
youfoundjake said:
“My understanding is that publishers are paid by advertisers on either a “per impression” or “per click” basis. By the time I use Readibility, the web page and its ads have already been delivered to my browser”
Right, and that leads to one of the issues..as mentioned here as well:
“Finally, a tiny nitpick: A tracking link doesn’t necessarily mean that something is an ad, or that money is trading hands. Web publishers may use tracking links just for… well, tracking.”
A user comes to a page, thats 1 impression for the “per impression” advertisers, and 1 impression for whatever tracking software is being used. The users switches to Readiblity, then turns it off (which forces a page reload), and there again is another impression for the “per impression” advertiser, and another impression in the tracking software.
immediately, I can see that Readibily, while designed to turn off ads and visual noise, is at the same time going to cost the advertisers more money to some extent.
Ackman said:
Danny Sullivan has a lot of interesting points for discussion but none of them are necessary to discuss (unless you have time and a cup of coffee). Out here in the real world, we are READERS and we will vote with our link clicker. Put it all behind a paywall, put up 90% in ads, put it all in plain text. Nobody cares. We, the READERS, will decide if it’s worth enough to pay, or not; worth enough to view, or not. Lets move on with this and build the best of the best. We don’t have enough time to read all this interesting stuff anyway!
Scott Schwartz said:
From jimlynch.com (http://jimlynch.com/index.php/2010/06/14/the-safari-reader-arms-race-begins/3/#ixzz0qwXsTRTu):
“I’ve made a few changes to my blogs, based on some of those ideas. I changed the position of some of my ads, to decrease clutter in the actual text of the article. There are still Vibrant ads there but they are in black text, not green. So that makes them a bit more tolerable and less distracting to readers… I also added the ability for readers to view entire articles by clicking the drop down menu and choosing Single Page….I’m putting my faith and trust in my readers. I’m giving them choices in how they can view my content, without making them dependent on one particular browser. In return for delivering great content and maximum reading flexibility, I hope they will support me by coming back and by letting my ads load in their browser. I believe it will be a win-win situation for all of us.”
That’s the point — make it easy for your readers to read your content and then they don’t have to rely on other solutions to read your content. Until all the sites I visit take this approach, I’ll continue to use Readability.
Hebrew Reader said:
why can’t readability alight text to the right? safari reader can…
Fabrizio said:
I found the discussion going on very interesting. But I’d like to put forward another angle on how Readability could actually make someone’s site ‘stickier’.
When I visit websites I find interesting I tend to bookmark them hoping I’ll have time to come back to read the article I found, thoroughly. Then I’ll forget about it and can’t remember it so the page ends up in my bookmark ‘blackhole’.
Since using Readability or the Reader in Safari. I know I take notice of the whole page first and then click to get the ‘comfortable view’ as I like to call it. Basically I will do what everyone does when surfing; scanning, then hopefully for publishers get interested in some ads. I’ll read the article (which I wouldn’t have done otherwise) then once I”m finished I get re-directed to the main page again and will peruse again the page to see if there’s extra stuff I missed within the website or move on.
Compare that to normal surfing with no Reader or Readabiilty and you’ll see that I wouldn’t spend so much time on the same website. I would only scan, not read the article and then move on…
As for Readability picking up more tags etc… we’ve got HTML 5 with the ‘article’ tag so that would be great that anything within it would be rendered by the Readablity.
I think having this option of zoning in into articles is a boon for website as people will really read the material and not only scan through it ! I found many websites more interesting and have remembered more easily.
My only suggestion to the team is the ability of putting the Readibility as a button on our own webpages to offer the service for people like myself who have trouble reading stuff off a computer screen. As not everyone will understand how to drag the script unto their browser favourites’ bar.
gigabook said:
multiple page support is very useful！
Sri said:
Very neat tool! I got to know Readability from Rough Type blog and since then I use it regularly. I am generally impressed by how easy it is to use (and free!). I often use the print page option to make text palatable to the eye & brain.
Couple of things I can think of, when I want to send a link there is no way to send it to it is already formatted by Readbility, I can still only send the original structure. I often send links in the print page version.
When there are multipages it often changes only the first page, would be great if it format the entire article.
Again, great job.. keep it up:)
Sy Weiss said:
Readability is my most used FREE program other than G-mail. It always works GREAT.
I keep thinking, HOW DO IT KNOW ? I love that it at times it includes art work or photographs that are in the original article .
YES if you want a contribution, let me know. I love Free, but want to support such great work.
Keep me on your mailing list.
Sy
Arnie Keller said:
Readability is probably the best damn thing on the whole damn web. Thank you.
Cliff said:
It’s not the ads per-se that annoy me, nor is it the inconsistency. IMO the ANIMATIONs are what make a site totally unreadable. I could tolerate all of the above were it not for the animations. Who can read with all the activity in the field of vision? I can temporarily disable Flash and Silverlight and GIF animations, but that’s a real hassle. “Readability” is like a 1-stop button that just shuts down and erases all the animation.
Speaking of payment – I would pay for “Readability”. It is invaluable.
K Hamilton said:
Not all web pages are well designed. White type on black backgrounds. Animations. Clutter. I don’t mind the ads on the publisher’s page. I mind not having -any- way to get a clear view of content that I decide I want to pay attention to. Readability gives that. I like it.
Milo Nej said:
Y love Readability and use it several times a day: it’s become a must. There is only one more little thing I would like to see implementing: could some extra space be inserted at the bottom of the page? Problem is that when scrolling down the text using the page down key, usually the beginning of the last chunk is in the middle of the page and I feel that all the time I have saved by using Readability is spent finding the “beginning of the end”
Eddie said:
Hello arc90,
Just wanted to say I *love* Readability and thank you so *VERY* much for making it and offering it to the world as free code. I am using Safari 5 on Mac OS X but I still much prefer Readability to Safari’s Reader mainly because a.) Readability goes full screen and de-clutters everything whereas Safari’s Reader doesn’t de-clutter instead it just darkens the background and thus with Safari it is still too easy for one’s eyes to be distracted by junk that tries to compete for your eyeball and then time / attention, b.) the option to configure Readability with different styles and font sizes is *huge* especially I use a MacBook Pro 17″ high resolution 1920 x 1200 screen and while I love this display, it is often too small for default font sizes that the so-called “gods of the universe” think they know what size font their web sites and user interfaces should be for everyone whereas it really should be adaptable (not everyone wants to wear glasses or squint at high res screens) — so this makes Readability very very awesome!; c.) the option to have footnotes rocks! Please keep up the great work and show Apple (in their Silicon Valley cocoon) what they should be doing NYC tech style ;-)
Ross Anderson said:
Readability is a great tool, and much needed on the web today. I think that web advertising is becoming a real usability problem for many people. It seems to me that it is fundamentally different from any other form of advertising, because it distracts you from what you are doing whilst you are doing it. This is not the case with printed advertising, or with television advertising. (Though a day may come when printed material may be able to carry video advertising).
I have also thought about the usability problem recently and for some time wanted to find a way to selectively remove elements from web pages, or at least to cover them up. As one poster mentioned above it is the animations within the field of vision that are particularly annoying. At times I would even run up Windows Task Manager and resize it and place it over an annoying advert whilst reading a page.
Whilst reading the book JavaScript the Definitive Guide by David Flanagan, I came up with the idea of a JavaScript bookmarklet to allow selective removal of web page elements. This evolved into a tooltip type interface which the user simply clicks on to remove the element hovered over. I then added a pop-up menu on the tooltip to display the ‘container heirarchy’ for the element to allow removal of whole groups of elements, eg. an ads section, a comments section, a left/right hand column, or a header or footer section. I also added a Ctrl-click feature to remove all elements except the current element/container. All in all with these functions its not too difficult to tidy up a page, and remove elements for a print-out or for saving locally. Like Readability, it puts power and choice back into the hands of the end user. I also added a ‘quick’ version which just removes all tag types commonly associated with Flash, and this alone often makes a page much more readable. I have created a web site and video for the tool at web-declutter dot com. Please feel free to add a comment if you find the tool useful or have any suggestions for improvement. I can also make my source code available if anyone is interested.
al said:
@danny
don’t cry so loud.. we only need to put in /etc/host the directions of the ads, and ¡no more ads!
This is diferent. Readability isn’t a tool for removing ads (i see ads sometimes at the bottom in pages treated with readability).
This is about how you want to see a web.
In addition, when we visited a web, we first see the content and then we press the button readability. If we are interested in some other crap, we only need to reload, and select other thing.
To a lot of people there is no different bettween adds or no adds, they will never click in an adds so…
About the adds in the bottom of the page:
WE choose to install readability in our browsers. So, if you don’t like readability (because you think that “brokes” your site”, just don’t installed.
We WANT that readability mark at the bottom APPEARS.
That’s all. Thank you for that amazing tool.
Alberto
pd: sorry for my non-native english